Despite two years of Katrina-fueled wrangling, often vitriolic diatribes, public finger-pointing and lawsuits, decision-makers for the Army Corps of Engineers, the New Orleans Sewerage & Water Board and Jefferson Parish have reached a consensus on what they think is the best technical solution for permanently protecting the 17th Street, London Avenue and Orleans Avenue canals from storm surges without hampering internal drainage.

They agreed this week to recommend big new pump stations at the mouth of the three New Orleans outfall canals and the eventual retirement of the historic S&WB stations farther inland.

The "partnering" group, which the corps assembled in January as a way of involving community leaders in making decisions on hurricane- and flood-protection issues, also agreed that the three canals should be deepened or widened to take better advantage of gravity in moving rainfall runoff from multiple points into the canals.

In the process of agreeing on new pump stations and larger canals, the group dismissed two other options before it:

-- Building new pump stations at the lake but retaining the S&WB's existing inland pumps, and operating them in tandem. Operating two stations on each of the three canals would multiply the headaches of maintenance and staff and make it more difficult to improve the canal to resist flooding.
-- Adding no pumps but simply building better, stronger floodwalls and levees along the three canals. This option would have the S&WB continue to operate its existing pump stations. It found no support among the group's members but was considered because Congress included it among three options for analysis.

The group's findings will now be forwarded to the corps' chief of engineers, who will include it in a report due to Congress by Aug. 25.

Group members were unanimous in their conclusion that the single-station concept for each canal trumps the other two options, said engineer Tom Jackson, a member of both the Southeast Louisiana Flood Protection Authority-East and the partnering group's executive committee.

"What we do now will make a difference in hurricane and flood protection for the next 150 years, and we all agree that this option is, hands down, far and above the other options," he said.

In its partnering agreement, signed late Tuesday, the group also included the suggestion that Congress consider commissioning a comprehensive study of the interior drainage systems that feed the three canals. Such a study would examine ways to optimize interior drainage in concert with storm surge protection, and it specifically identified a "pump to the river" diversion plan that Jefferson Parish officials are pushing hard.

Jefferson leaders, fueled by a vocal group of mostly Old Metairie residents, want rainfall runoff in Hoey's Basin diverted to the Mississippi River instead of continuing to flow to the 17th Street Canal, where it must share space with runoff from New Orleans.

The partnering work to date is conceptual, and the analysis that the group completed this week doesn't include the cost of building or operating any of the options it considered. Congress didn't ask for cost estimates.

Clearly, however, the pricetag would run into the hundreds of millions of dollars. Consultants hired by Jefferson Parish to study just the Hoey's Basin pump-to-the-river project recently pegged its cost at $97 million to $146 million, depending on capacity.

Jackson said he found it thrilling to watch and participate in the search for accord between groups that often find themselves with conflicting positions and agendas.

"I think this was a great meeting," he said of Tuesday's grueling session that ended with the signing of an agreement. "There was a good exchange between the three big bears in the room: Jefferson Parish, the Orleans Sewerage & Water Board and the Corps of Engineers.

"Making this work will take regional cooperation," Jackson said. "We're all in the same hole, and we've got to work together technically, not politically, if we're going to get out of it."

Col. Jeffrey Bedey, chief of the corps' Hurricane Protection Office and a leader of the partnering effort, said he was pleased with the process and the outcome.

"Who would have thought it, huh? How is it that the corps and Sewerage & Water Board and Jefferson Parish could all sit down and agree," Bedey said Thursday. "Maybe it's indicative of what we've learned as a result of Katrina."

If the corps chief of engineers endorses the report, Bedey said, the next step will be Congress. "We'll have to wait and see how they respond to the report," he said.

If the plan comes to fruition, Jackson said he thinks that the historically valuable S&WB pump stations in each canal could be shut down but remain in place as museum pieces, without disrupting water flow to new pump stations closer to Lake Pontchartrain.

Sheila Grissett can be reached at sgrissett@timespicayune.com or (504) 717-7700.